User Ratings & Reviews

A 500ml bottle with a BB of July 2013, so it's slightly out of date. Acquired a while back from Trembling Madness in York and stored in my garage. I hope it's still in good condition. As the name implies, this is a single-hop pale ale containing a shed-load of NZ hop variety Motueka.

Poured into a tulip pint glass. Bottle conditioned. A hazy golden hue with fine sediment and medium carbonation. Produces a large head of creamy white foam with decent retention; this slowly subsides to a persistent surface layer. Some lacing. Aroma of sweet, juicy hops with notes of white grape, melon, tangerine, lime, mild grapefruit and a hint of grass. This is underpinned by grainy malt and musty, earthy yeast. It smells fantastic.

Once again, Arbor demonstrate themselves to be masters of the balanced, hoppy pale ale. It looks great, while the aroma and flavour are superb - replete with fruity hop character and underpinned by subtle yeast and malt. Good body and texture. Despite holding on to this bottle for a bit too long, it still drinks amazingly well. A cracking brew that is definitely worth sampling if you come across it.

Coming in a 500ml brown bottle, BB 30/06/2014, served lightly-chilled in a straight imperial pint glass.

A: pours a lightly murky, pale golden colour, coming with a relatively low level of carbonation and a thin off-white foamy head to last.
S: rich in sweet citrus fruity notes, it smells a bit like a Cascade-rich beer even, while the yeastiness and gristy pale malts contribute an underlying acidity and grainy texture to the aroma; given a good swirl, an almost honey-ish sweet aroma develops, along with more resins extracted by the large amount of hops used during the boil.
T: softly sparkling on the entry, the flavour is largely… mild in terms of both maltiness and hoppiness, a bit bland, lightly lemony… the semi-earthy edge of hops and yeastiness follows suit while leaving citric undertones to disappear prematurely on the palate, and the hop bitterness is equally short-lived. The lightly grainy malts do not seem to endow the beer with much weight, not unexpected judging by its alc. but still, it doesn’t help.
M&O: quietly refreshing, due to the microscopic fizziness in general, light-bodied and sometimes thin, this supposedly hoppy golden ale fails to deliver what is set out on the beer label, and hence not a successful product as far as this bottle is concerned.